The present invention is directed to a digital voice paging system using digital signal processing to transmit compressed voice data via the excess FM channel bandwidth associated with an FM broadcast station.
The demand for personal telecommunication devices has increased drastically in the past decade, with the major market growth focused on two products: cellular mobile phones and paging systems. Cellular phone networks require huge front end investment for their initial implementation, and continuous investment to increase the number of cells in order to maintain an acceptable user density level per cell, since the density level grows with the increase in numbers of subscribers. Cellular phone networks also require a developed telephone network encompassing a large coverage area.
Paging systems, on the other hand, require less investment but only provide a one way message service in characters, numbers, or voice messages. The first generation pager was a beeper-based system which "beeped" when a number associated with a specific pager was accessed. Subsequently, numerical based pagers were developed, capable of transmitting a telephone number to a pager device. Both of these systems are "notification" based in that no actual message is sent. The individual carrying the pager needs to call a telephone number to receive a complete message. This presents a problem to users in countries with a low per capita number of telephones. For example, in China only about 1% of the population has access to a telephone. Thus, users of beepers or numeric pagers in such countries may not have ready access to a telephone to receive their messages.
It is estimated that only about 25% of telephone messages are of a nature requiring a message recipient to return a telephone call, i.e. those types of messages which are of significant length. Therefore, paging systems that can transmit messages in either character or voice form may be able to satisfy 75% of the needs of telephone users. A Chinese character pager has been employed in an attempt to satisfy communication requirements in China, allowing the transmission of messages in text form. Unfortunately, given the tremendous number of Chinese characters, it is time consuming to type Chinese messages. A large typist pool is required, resulting in significant expense and managerial effort.
On the other hand, analog voice paging systems have been developed which are capable of transmitting entire voice messages. Due to the nature of transmitting voice messages, (bandwidth and time requirements, etc.) some form of data compression is necessary. Unfortunately, due to technology limitations associated with current voice compression methods, these prior art analog systems have been limited to a maximum compression ratio of 3 to 1 (i.e., a three second message can be compressed into a one second transmission). The compression ratio achievable by such analog systems cannot sustain a user base of more than several hundred users and as such, it is too uneconomical to support a viable business.
Voice paging systems are known as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,553,386; 4,479,124; 4,847,888; 4,870,402; 4,885,577; and 5,412,719.
To transmit more data, either the bandwidth must be increased to provide for more data in a given period of time, or, if bandwidth cannot be increased, a data compression scheme must be used to increase the effective amount of data transferred during a given period of time. Highly sophisticated digital signal processing (DSP) schemes have been employed in military applications for some time, and this technology has recently been made available for commercial applications. Powerful processors implementing this technology can provide a voice message compression ratio of up to 25:1.
Cellular phone and pager systems typically require that a large spectrum of frequencies be dedicated to their services. Clear frequencies, particularly frequencies allocated to cellular phones and paging, are harder and harder to obtain due to the rapid expansion of cellular and paging services. Even when bandwidth has been become available, technology considerations typically associated with operating at these newly available frequencies have forced costs which are prohibitively high.
However, within that area of the radio frequency spectrum associated with FM broadcasting, i.e. the band from 88 to 107 MHz, there is a portion of bandwidth within each FM channel which is not required for transmitting the main FM station broadcast signal, and which has not been fully utilized. Since the inception of FM broadcasting, FM station owners have tried to more efficiently utilize all of their allotted frequency resource including this available "excess" bandwidth.
In the United States, FM radio stations are granted a license to operate an FM radio signal within an assigned range of frequencies called a channel. This range is substantially larger than the minimum range required for the main FM radio signal. A typical FM station is assigned a bandwidth of 200 KHz. Within the positive or one-sided baseband frequency spectrum of 100 KHz bandwidth, an FM station will take up to a maximum of 53 KHz for the main FM stereo broadcasting station, and less for a monoaural station. The remaining portion of the baseband signal from 53 KHz to 99 KHz, approximately 50% of the available FM channel spectrum resource, is not required for broadcasting the main FM station signal.
Radio stations have leased frequencies in the "excess" bandwidth to other users through various subcarrier based systems. One such service is known as Sub-Carrier Administration (SCA). SCA has been used in the United States for over forty years for background music without commercial interruption, reading services for the blind, stock market information, and educational and religious applications. SCA has also been used for data transmission, having the ability to reliably support a data rate of 4,800 bits/second or higher. The FCC has deregulated SCA service and stations are free to carry SCA services without prior authorization, so long as all uses of the frequency are within the regulations imposed on the license holder.
FM paging systems using SCA are known as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,885,802; 5,170,487; 5,262,769; and 5,428,610.
Thus, use has previously been made of the "excess" portion of the FM channel bandwidth. As a result, the use of in-place FM transmission systems to provide wide coverage paging applications may in some instances be limited due to previous user allocation (e.g., weather information, stock market information, or other type of data transfer). The ability of a paging system to transmit data over the excess portion of an FM channel, via an FM station infrastructure providing wide coverage, is a function of the amount of bandwidth that is available. The paging system operator is otherwise limited in the amount and speed of data transfer by the bandwidth. The use of a narrow bandwidth with voice paging systems is usually not desirable due to the amount of data to be transmitted, but may in fact be necessary.
The RDS (radio data system) system is another subcarrier based data system which has been implemented by the BBC on all BBC FM transmissions in England. Similar systems are available in several European countries under a standard described in "European Broadcasting Union (EBU) no. 3244-F p. 11" in which the RDS system is also described. This publication is herein incorporated by reference. In these systems an RDS subcarrier at 57 kHz is modulated with data signals. The RDS system has a number of message group types. For example, a Group Type 4A message is for clock time and date information and, a Group Type 6A message is for In-House data.
The data rate for the RDS system is 1187.5 bits/second or approximately 11.4 groups/second. Since systems like the RDS system have broad coverage, a number of users can use a data channel on a pro-rata basis.
RDS has been popular in European countries for transmitting traffic-related information to motorists, utilizing the existing FM radio broadcasting infrastructure. However, RDS has a slow data transmission rate and with its myriad of function groups RDS is too slow for effective data transmission. On the other hand, RDS does have additional functional aspects providing for roaming, seeking and locking onto of FM stations transmitting RDS signals.
Thus, given lack of telephone resources in some countries, a need exists for a message system which does not require a message recipient to dial a telephone number to optain a message. Also, given the complex nature of some languages, especially those such as Chinese and Japanese which have hundreds of characters, a need exists for a non-character, voice based message system which does not require a tremendous human interaction to forward messages in character intensive languages.
Given a lack of available bandwidth and in view of the large bandwidth required by voice based message paging systems, a voice paging system using data compression is required.
Finally, given the costs attendant with setting up any message system, a system which can use currently available, broadcast frequency transmission apparatus is desirable, for example an FM-based system capable of using currently available FM broadcast station equipment.